Something like that.
Truthfully, he will help our build up play a lot which will boost chance creation. It is not going to turn us into title contenders: for that we need a top striker and better performances from Antony/Sancho. Assuming Rashford will keep his form and Mount will do great.
I appreciate the sincere reply. Better passing out of the back is inherently a good thing but there's really no correlation between better passing out of the back and good chance creation, but it certainly doesn't hurt. And there is absolutely is no correlation between better passing out of the back and good chance conversion.
Where we fell apart this year -- apart from the Brentford, City and Liverpool debacles 17 goals conceded in those three matches, but while we're on the subject: 27 goals conceded in the other 35 PL matches, which is more than decent -- was our finishing. We were god fukking awful with our finishing outside of Rashford. In the few games Martial was physically able to play, his finishing was awful; Sancho could only manage 6 goals; Antony only 4 goals. Let's forget about Martial: Sancho and Antony were in no way starved for service because we could never move the ball out of our own final third. They were just horrifying on goal. How many times did we see Antony shape for his left foot over and over and refuse to use his right foot? Too many. None of that had anything to do with De Gea and if neither Sancho or Antony pull themselves together there's nothing Onana's improved passing out of the back can do about that.
Let's take a match that probably reflects the general frustration we endured this season: Palace 1, United 1 on January 18. The official xg was 0.5 for Palace, 2.1 for United. United had 60% possession. United had a passing accuracy of 81%. United had 15 shots on goal, 4 on target. I can't find any heat maps for the game, but I remember it well enough to know that we dominated possession, created more good chances, had no particular problems moving the ball out of the back, and that we "should have" won the game. But we lost the game on a stoppage time free kick by Michael Olise, which I would argue could not have been stopped by Onana, or even Obama.
It's actually worth checking out again one of the top free kicks of this last season:
A reasonable response to the goal by Olise is that no one is expecting Onana to save every shot, certainly not a free kick that may go down as the top free kick of last season and probably the greatest goal Olise will ever score in his professional career. No doubt about that. But we should never have been in that position in the first place, demanding that De Gea keep a clean sheet by saving an unsaveable shot on goal, lest failure to do meant dropped points. We were clinging to a 0-1 lead in a match where we dominated the opponent and should have them but failed to do so because of poor finishing, not an inability to pass the ball out of the back.
Most opponents in the PL this last season sat back on us, knowing we would crap out pants at the first sight on goal, which in fact happened all the fukking time. They would hit us on counters and take their chances on direct free kicks and corner kicks. Top teams like City and Arsenal took the game to us, pressing high and creating problems, and a keeper like Onana will help us beat presses, but we still have a weakness at RB that opponents can exploit (the few clubs which did press us invited the ball to the right side) and when Casemiro was out due to various suspensions we were incredibly vulnerable in midfield as well. And of course going Route One to Antony and Sancho is pretty
useful (EDIT: useless) as Antony is easily defended in breakaway situations and Sancho for whatever reason is useless in 1v1 situations. I trust Rashford and Garnacho with outstanding Route One balls, but I really hope we're not bringing in Onana for the purpose of becoming a Route One club. Presumably not, so it's all about improving our buildup play and if that's the case then we really need to have a conversation about the weakest link on the back line: right fullback. And, we're only one muscle injury away from having to resort to Maguire or Lindelof, not exactly exemplars of buildup play. And we need cover for Casemiro. And we need to do something about Sancho and Antony, who significantly underperformed last season against the most modest of expectations. And we need to bring in a striker who is ready right now for the PL, not 2-3 years from now.
